Vietnamese films have a big difference in revenue.
According to statistics from Box Office Vietnam, as of the afternoon of February 2, the order of revenue of 3 Vietnamese films shown during Tet did not have many surprises. After more than 5 days of showing, "The Four Guardians" has earned 175 billion VND. The film set countless records such as: The fastest Vietnamese film to reach 100 billion VND of all time, the Vietnamese film with the most pre-booked tickets of all time... "The Four Guardians" earned more than 40 billion VND in revenue per day with nearly 6,000 screenings.
The gap between “The Four Guardians” and other Vietnamese films shown during Tet is quite large. “The Billionaire Kiss” earned over 32 billion VND while “Love by Mistake” only earned over 9.3 billion VND.
Although after the release, the films were rated equally for having good casts and famous directors. However, each film has its own strengths and weaknesses, all revolving around young love stories and having humor in the first days of the year.
However, the Vietnamese film market is unpredictable. After being released on the first day of Tet, the revenue gap between films is getting bigger, partly reflecting the taste of the audience as well as the media effect of each crew.
Compared to previous Tet film seasons with diverse genres, this year's film season is more boring as three works exploit the comedy - romance genre with the theme of love triangles among young people.
In “The Billionaire Kiss”, the main cast of the film, Doan Thien An, Le Xuan Tien, and Ma Ran Do, only played their roles well, making the frame more beautiful. The script had many surprises but was bland and had absurd, immature details about the story of Cinderella hunting for a rich man.
“Love by mistake best friend” is a movie with cinematic quality in terms of images and acting because it was made by a professional crew. However, the movie script is adapted from a very famous Thai movie without many new changes compared to the original.
The film is advertised as bringing Vietnamese landscapes to the audience. However, the beautiful scenes with the same camera angles as the MV are not very special and are easily seen in many travel videos or other recent movies. Meanwhile, “The Four Guardians” is criticized for being long-winded, noisy and having thin content.
Heavy on tricks
“The Billion Dollar Kiss” is the first film directed by Thu Trang. The film uses the popular “blind rip-off” trend of young people with two randomly shown endings. This is a new way of promotion but it does not help the film break through in terms of revenue in the rankings.
Meanwhile, Tran Thanh's "The Four Guardians" also has many tricks to make the audience discuss enthusiastically. That is, Tran Thanh invited many famous names in the guest cast, notably the handsome men of "Anh trai say hi" or the guest roles are famous stars.
Taking advantage of the appeal of famous music shows and guests helps "The Guardian Quartet" gain a large following, achieve high recognition, thereby spreading the work to many audiences.
However, this trick cannot cover up many shortcomings in the script. The work overuses tilted and rotated camera angles to show the characters' unstable moods. The long running time makes the story drag and the film's rhythm unstable.
At the premiere of the movie “Love by mistake for a best friend” in Ho Chi Minh City, while performing a skit about the wedding party of two characters in the movie, Tran Ngoc Vang suddenly kissed Kaity Nguyen amid cheers from the guests. Some viewers believe that this is a PR trick of the distributor when the project is somewhat inferior to the other two “competitors” in the Tet movie race.
Overall, the Tet film market this year did not have many surprises for the audience. Many film experts predicted the box office success of Tran Thanh's films as over the past Tet seasons, this male director has always dominated the box office.
In addition to the Vietnamese films mentioned above, this Tet season, foreign animated films also appeared but did not make much of an impression in terms of revenue.
